Artillery

[Yohoho]

Does anyone know if artillery units will be in HOI3? With the increase in provinces, its getting more feasible to be able to shoot shells from one province to another. Historically, artillery played an important role. There could be rules to govern artillery. Just some ideas.

1) Artillery alone cannot defend a province from invaders.

2) Artillery cannot invade and claim a province.

3) Artillery could suppress troops and prevent them from moving.

4) Units under artillery bombardment, depending on how well there dug in. Will affect how damaged that unit can become.ie. (dug in 0) being 80%, (dug in 20) being 5% and how much damage the unit will take.

5) If Units move under artillery bombardment they can be very vulnerable to damage and disorganization.

6) Artillery could never completely destroy a unit, 50% unless retreating.

7) If a unit is engaged in combat and you do an artillery bombardment. Both sides in combat will receive damage.

There would have to be some kind of guard against a person having mega stacks of artillery, and blasting away any attacking force. Maybe some rule that when invading a province you only take so much damage, or only get hit by the artillery in the province your attacking.

Just throwing it out there and seeing what other ideas people have on artillery.

Sorry if this is already an active discussion on this. This is just my two cents on artillery.

 

[unmerged(127904)]

Do u read dev diaries?
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=379311
there is everything u need - nothing more is certain

 

[Lazy_Boy]

If you're talking about something like civilization please god no.

But giving a division with artillery brigades the ability to siege attack to soften defenses and org then sure why not. Germans did have Leningrad under siege for years after all. If the Soviets hadn't built a rail line over the ice the city most certainly would have staved and fallen. Would be nice to have more options than all out attack or nothing.

 

[LaDoncella]

If the Soviets hadn't built a rail line over the ice the city most certainly would have staved and fallen.

pretty insane :rofl:

 

[unmerged(45464)]

I have been wanting something like that for some time. Doesn't seem realistic to just add some soft and hard attack and have artillery act like anything else when it should be used to soften up the enemy before advancing. Would be hard to model in the game though =(

 

[Jerzul]

I have been wanting something like that for some time. Doesn't seem realistic to just add some soft and hard attack and have artillery act like anything else when it should be used to soften up the enemy before advancing. Would be hard to model in the game though =(

There could always be some kind of "mission" for units with Art Bde's in their division setup. Something where they can wear down the org of units in a neighboring province ala the "Interdiction" mission for Air units. It would probably not be able to do a lot of damage and create more micro managing but it's possible.

 

[blue emu]

... artillery ... should be used to soften up the enemy before advancing.

Not from 150 km away. By the time units are close enough to fire Artillery at each other... they are already in the same province.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I like you Idea Jerzul, Emu are you sure all active fronts had 150km of no mans land between the opposing forces during WW2? And some provinces we have seen so far are as small as 20 by 20km.

I would also like for all units that contain artillery to have a kind of "Barrage" mode. When active they (the Art Bdes only) would consume supplies at 3x rate but deal a small ammount of their strenght or org damage as attrition to nearby enemy units.

Reduced damage versus dug in or enemies in fortresses ofc.

This would be great to symbolize how many armies used days of heavy barrages to soften up enemies before and during their main attack.

A barrage could last for a week as standard setting. So we don't have to worry about them eating all supplies if we forget to turn it off.

Extra awesomeness of we see a little 3d gun for each Art-Bde shooting when this happen

 

[blue emu]

... Emu are you sure all active fronts had 150km of no mans land between the opposing forces during WW2?...

Of course not... I am referring only to the spatial granularity of the game, not to anything in real life.

Even with HOI-3's 5x (or 10x) increase in the number of Land provinces, that still leaves typical spatial granularity far too coarse to support the idea of province-to-province Artillery bombardments.

A suggestion more in-line with the granularity of the game would be to include a seperate "Bombardment" phase in the normal combat resolution, similar to the sequence of phases in the Crusader Kings combat engine.

 

[7thGalaxy]

What would really be nice would be some sort of attrition when opposing armies are located in provinces with touching borders. This would model the small scale skirmishes which surely would have been going on, perhaps even with a small trickle of infrastructure loss to represent artillery bombardments of enemy supply lines etc. I always thought it was a bit silly in HoI2 when your armies sat staring at each other, and unless they were actually ordered to attack - which would represent a large offensive - they would just sit on their hands and do nothing to each other.

 

[unmerged(40779)]

Even with HOI-3's 5x (or 10x) increase in the number of Land provinces, that still leaves typical spatial granularity far too coarse to support the idea of province-to-province Artillery bombardments.

I don't get your logic here, please clarify.

I've always thought that when my division in this province and the enemy division in the next province are sitting opposed to eachother, they are both in the edges of their provinces, with a no-mans-land of 1-5km in between them. Perfectly possible to bombard the enemy front line without attacking, =attempting to push the enemy division out of the province he controls. It doesn't mean that the provinces need to be small enough for artillery in the next province to cover it from North to South.

 

[unmerged(40779)]

What would really be nice would be some sort of attrition when opposing armies are located in provinces with touching borders. This would model the small scale skirmishes which surely would have been going on, perhaps even with a small trickle of infrastructure loss to represent artillery bombardments of enemy supply lines etc. I always thought it was a bit silly in HoI2 when your armies sat staring at each other, and unless they were actually ordered to attack - which would represent a large offensive - they would just sit on their hands and do nothing to each other.

So true. I have spoken for this since the HoI1

EVERY SINGLE DAY spent in a province with partisan activity and/or bordering a province occupied by enemy troops should cause attrition and give experience (with a cap of course - you can't become 100exp fighter with such small scale skirmishing, but definitely more confident thatn someone who hasn't left the barracks).
The rate of the attrition should then be dependable on the dissent (demoralized troops are less active in small scale), doctrines, leader skills and traits, P-activity and dug-in/fortifications.

EDIT: And, should such such concept exist in the game, war exhaustion. Longer the war goes, less keen are the troops to "annoy" the enemy just for the sake of it. See the Western Front of WW I for this - the effect was quite drastic.

 

[unmerged(44926)]

Even in WWI on the Western Front artillery fire wasn't just done randomly. Of course there are exceptions, but generally artillery was used to soften enemy troops before an attack, pin enemy troops in place (either through suppression or deception), or was saved for counter-battery fire and pre-planned defensive firing.

Artillery shells were a precious commodity and were generally not just flung at random into enemy trenches in hopes of doing a bit of damage. Even when artillery was used with the intention of smashing enemy forces simply for the sake of causing casualties, rather than in support of an advance or as a defensive measure, it was concentrated in a single spot for what was believed would be maximum effect. Spreading this out over the entire front wouldn't have just been a waste of shells, it would have revealed the location of your guns to the enemy, and probably would have gotten them smashed for little to no gain.

Though I agree that actions like artillery bombardments should be possible, damage to units simply for bordering enemy troops isn't quite right. The ability to add artillery bombardments before main attacks might be nice, but it should cost quite a lot in way of supplies.

 

[unmerged(45464)]

Of course not... I am referring only to the spatial granularity of the game, not to anything in real life.

Even with HOI-3's 5x (or 10x) increase in the number of Land provinces, that still leaves typical spatial granularity far too coarse to support the idea of province-to-province Artillery bombardments.

A suggestion more in-line with the granularity of the game would be to include a seperate "Bombardment" phase in the normal combat resolution, similar to the sequence of phases in the Crusader Kings combat engine.

I like that idea!!! I mean the one about separate phases. Never thought about that, but it would make a lot of sense not just for artillery, but for other things as well. Maybe tanks would engage first and then infantry (depending on doctrine of course since many countries would rather keep them together). I doubt we'll see that though, but it could be great.

 

[henryjai]

also i hope units use less supplies when not in combat...

 

[Baneslave]

also i hope units use less supplies when not in combat...

This was actually in HoI2, too. I don't see any reason for this feature to be dropped.

 

[7thGalaxy]

The rate of the attrition should then be dependable on the dissent (demoralized troops are less active in small scale), doctrines, leader skills and traits, P-activity and dug-in/fortifications..

And of course Experiance. It was the most experianced and elite troops in WW1 who harried the enemy most.

 

[Evans]

Though I agree that actions like artillery bombardments should be possible, damage to units simply for bordering enemy troops isn't quite right. The ability to add artillery bombardments before main attacks might be nice, but it should cost quite a lot in way of supplies.

Isn't this essentially already factored in in a sense with the 'offensive' command? We're dealing with division level combat here, artillery strikes are abstracted and their use in any particular way should perhaps be abstracted to doctrines? However, from other posts I would suggest some method of attrition combat be on offer for active fronts (read bordering provinces) both for the purpose of sieges ala bombarding Leningrad but also low level action across the board.

Movement is attack should perhaps be used for the real offensives pushing into the enemy hard with concentrated force. I also agree that partisan actions should cause small amounts of attrition to the units engaged in combating them (and if somehow railways were implemented, you'd actually have need to combat them - historically they were able to tie up large numbers of troops).

 

[unmerged(40779)]

Though I agree that actions like artillery bombardments should be possible, damage to units simply for bordering enemy troops isn't quite right. The ability to add artillery bombardments before main attacks might be nice, but it should cost quite a lot in way of supplies.

The attrition I spoke about should come from the small scale wafrare that is raging all the time, snipers shooting, small patrols clashing and whatnot - not only the artillery fire.

 

[TheLand]

Though I agree that actions like artillery bombardments should be possible, damage to units simply for bordering enemy troops isn't quite right. The ability to add artillery bombardments before main attacks might be nice, but it should cost quite a lot in way of supplies.

HOI has never really modelled the nature of a serious artillery bombardment, whether in World War I or World War II.

Major offensives in both wars often started with a mammoth deployment of artillery which took some weeks to organise, then a mammoth expenditure of shells for a few days, the like of which wouldn't be seen until the lines stabilised and another breakthrough offensive was needed.

In HOI2 we had artillery brigades and the "offensive supply" button but that behaved rather differently....